No Going Back

by Sheena Kamal

  “Cristina Guerrero is a twenty-three-year-old Colombian student currently enrolled in Business Studies at Yale,” says Simone. “Her father made his money in oil, but personally I feel it might be cocaine.”

  “That’s a bit biased.”

  “Apologies, you delicate flower, you. Rehab is a fucking trip, as always. Anyway! The dad married a beauty queen who died of an eating disorder ten years ago. Dear Cristina was packed away to boarding school soon after. I found an interview done with her in a fashion magazine where she said her mother starved herself to death so she wouldn’t have to. But with her bone structure and money, the whole world is her playground. She hopes to use her business degree to get into fashion for plus-size women. In her spare time, she’s a lifestyle guru and posts health and well-being advice from exotic locales around the world.”

  “Must be so hard for her,” I say. We giggle.

  “Oh, I agree. Especially now that she’s witnessed a murder—a cold-blooded execution, as she called it in her online post. Her followers have gone up by hundreds of thousands. People concerned about her take on health, well-being, and fashion now that she’s been so traumatized, no doubt.”

  The lack of alcohol is making Simone a little testy, but it’s okay with me. She can be testy as long as she’s sober.

  “This is it,” I say. “This video shows that Dao murdered Bernard Lam. Have the local police identified him?”

  “I’m going through news reports using a keyword search, but no, not as far as I can see.”

  “Then he’s long gone. He didn’t plan on killing Lam, and now there’s a video out there . . . he’s not sticking around. He must have left right after that shootout.”

  “I mean, if I murdered somebody and had access to Michael Acosta’s resources, I would have made moves, too . . . There’s no doubt in your mind he’s coming after you, right?”

  “None.”

  “Well, if the police won’t identify him, there’s only one thing left to do. I’m going to release this video through social media and get the comments going. And I’ll drop some anonymous hints that the same guy who roughed up the protester is the one who killed our friend Bernie. Everyone and Interpol is going to be looking for David Tao now. Thank God for heiresses with top-of-the-line phone cameras.”

  When I hang up, I also feel a moment of gratitude for the existence of heiresses, one in particular. It’s a feeling I never thought I’d have. Every day there’s a new surprise waiting for me, a new betrayal.

  The doors and windows of the cabin are still locked. Lynn is sitting in the kitchen with a French press in front of her. Whisper is at her feet.

  “I let her out a few minutes ago,” Lynn says.

  “Thank you,” I say, very carefully. I’m not sure how to read her mood. The last time we were alone in a room together, Lynn and I, she told me her marriage was over and she was taking Bonnie to Toronto. She left behind photographs of Bonnie’s life. She didn’t have to do that, but she did. It was the start of something between us, but neither of us wanted to acknowledge it. But we knew it was there. A kind of understanding.

  A beginning, perhaps.

  She pours a cup of coffee for herself and one for me. “How are you holding up?” she asks.

  “Couldn’t be better,” I say. “What about you?”

  She sighs. “It’s been so long since someone asked me that question, I don’t even know how to begin answering it.”

  I’m not feeling up to conversation, either. We sit in the quiet kitchen and finish the French press. She makes another one. We drink that, too.

  “I have to get going,” I say.

  She nods. “Go get him.”

  “I will.”

  Her voice takes on a hard edge. “I mean it, Nora. I don’t pretend to understand what’s happening here, with you or with Bonnie. But it has to end. And I’m not stupid. Everett wants to be a big shot; he wants to hire bodyguards and all that. He doesn’t see. Whoever tried to take Bonnie, it wasn’t about her at all. It was about you. So I’m going to support his decision, and I’ll do the best I can to protect our daughter, but you’re the one who has to fix this.”

  “I know.”

  “Good. Here, take this with you.” She breaks off a banana from a bunch and packs some of the leftover pizza from last night, along with two bottles of water. After I feed Whisper and let her stretch her legs once more, Lynn sends me on my way.

  She told me to take responsibility for the mess I’ve created, which hurt, but it is a fair assessment of the situation. I’m to do it for our daughter, but before I go, here is some sustenance for my journey.

  I drive away from the cabin with the knowledge that I’ve been reprimanded and nourished simultaneously. It’s a new experience for me. Does Bonnie experience this every day? Is this what it’s like to have a mother?

  I wouldn’t know.

  50

  To say the heavy snowfall caught the city by surprise is a ridiculous understatement. People are in a state of shock, interspersed by moments of panic. No one knows what to do with their hands. Should they try to dig out their vehicles, which they don’t know how to drive in these weather conditions, or do they dial their workplaces to say they aren’t coming in? Tips on how to drive in the snow fill local news reports while those who had moved here to get out of this kind of vengeful weather curse their misfortune and sneer at the masses who are seemingly struck helpless by flakes of fluffy white precipitation.

  I am on the side of the cursing and sneering few. It takes me, as Leo would say, literally forever to get to Mountain View Cemetery.

  It’s such a letdown, visiting a grave.

  Herein lies the rotting body of a person who was once alive. Here’s a stone slab with some basic identifying information on it. I’m reading the words on the headstone, but they don’t make sense. Well, they do, technically, but they’re not what I think about when I think of Sebastian Crow.

  Is this all that’s left behind of him? A name. A date of birth and a date of death. A profession.

  There’s nothing sentimental about this piece of stone stuck into the earth, not even a nice quote or bit of poetry to make his existence on the planet seem worthwhile. To show that he had a good life, an interesting one. That he had loved and was loved in return. Maybe loved a little too much, actually, given Leo’s mental state after his death.

  There’s nothing to show what kind of heart Seb had, which is a shame because, love squabbles aside, he had a good one. It was the one he showed to me. There’s this feeling I can’t shake, that I have let him down somehow by going to Detroit to learn about my father’s life there. I left a dying man alone in order to figure out what happened to an already dead one. What kind of sense does that make?

  It was supposed to be me figuring out the headstone. Why hadn’t I thought of this in advance? About what should be included on this ugly piece of stone? The bit of poetry was my responsibility, because I was the one who was with him in what had to have been the most painful year of his life, watching him lose the battle to cancer. He’d chosen me to be with him at the end, and I let him down. And I don’t even know what poetry he liked, if he had even liked poetry at all.

  I really shouldn’t be in this nice silent graveyard, making a clear target of myself. But where else am I supposed to read Seb’s memoirs? The snow has stopped falling and the ground has hardened with the cold, so I put down a blanket, which Whisper immediately settles over, and pour some coffee from Seb’s old thermos that I’ve lifted from Leo’s apartment. The temptation to add some whiskey to the thermos is as strong as ever, but thankfully Leo is keeping all his booze to himself these days. I read for a while, nodding at certain passages, my favorites. None of this is new to me because I’d helped Seb craft this book. The stories are his, the life was his, but I had something to do with the organization of it, with the vetting of information.

  This book feels like an old friend.

  It feels like my friend.

  When it gets
too cold to sit any longer, I pack everything away and wander farther into the cemetery to a grave I have never visited before, though I have known for some time where it is and who it belongs to.

  In my life, I have been close to two investigative journalists, both dead now. Mike Starling and Sebastian Crow weren’t the attractive, charismatic sorts you see on television. They weren’t rugged, go-get-’em types. People didn’t just fall into bed with them with little or no effort on their parts, and nobody with eyes would put them on television for a viewing public for their telegenic appeal alone. It didn’t matter that they weren’t pretty. What mattered was that they were good. They were the real deal. The ones who would never get famous, never be booked on American talk shows to talk about their work. When their work came out, it was relegated to the much shittier Canadian press, but they didn’t mind because it wasn’t about personal exposure; it was about the work.

  They were obsessed with their stories.

  This obsession I can understand. In truth, I’m feeling more than a little obsessed right now. I’m standing in front of Starling’s grave, reading the words on his tombstone. Unlike Seb, he got a quote. Someone was looking out for him. There, carved in marble—a nice touch—is part of a Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “. . . unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”

  It is a generous bit of dishonesty because everyone who knew Starling was aware that he was a Hunter S. Thompson man who liked to laugh into his rum and drunkenly mutter, verbatim, “It’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.”

  But how he really felt about his profession isn’t tombstone material and, to be honest, the lie looks much better in the dim winter light. I’m feeling tenderly toward Starling. I was somewhat prepared for Seb’s death, through the writing of his memoirs and taking him to his appointments. Watching his rapid deterioration. But I wasn’t ready to see Starling go, because he had been murdered, found floating in a bathtub full of bloody water. Found by me, which was a strange bit of karma because it was his connection to me that killed him in the end.

  Dao, the man responsible for this hit on me, was responsible for Starling’s death two years ago. He is responsible for the attack on Nate Marlowe and was the engineer behind Bonnie’s kidnapping.

  Nothing stirs in this graveyard, not even the wind.

  I feel a presence behind me. Leo’s eyes are bloodshot, and his tie is askew. He looks like he slept in the clothes he’s wearing.

  “Where did you sleep last night?” I ask.

  “What?” he says absently. “Oh, I had a date. That’s not what I called you to talk about. Whoever has been watching you has given up on the office, but they’re still on my apartment.” Whisper goes to him, and they spend a moment engaging in an ecstatic lovefest.

  “I left some stuff there. They figure I’ll be back at some point to pick it up.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. Warsame was able to follow them to a bar in Surrey. The first time he did it, it was a man he followed and the second time it was a woman. Nora, they went to a biker bar.”

  “That fits with what Brazuca said. Three Phoenix still has a pipeline into the country, and they’re filtering product through a biker gang. Guess the bikers are still surveilling me for them.”

  “There’s one more thing you should know.” Leo pauses. “Brazuca ran into some trouble with one of the bikers a while back. A guy named Curtis Parnell. Warsame helped him with the case, so he’s got more information than I do. But from what I heard, Parnell has an axe to grind with Brazuca.”

  “What’s the bar?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says, lying.

  “Leo,” I say. “They tried to take my daughter. Again. Someone was waiting for her at her house in Toronto.”

  “Fuck,” Leo says, sounding stricken. He gives me the name of the bar. Then he says, “She must have been so scared. How is she doing?”

  “She’s seventeen years old. Who would actually know?”

  “Good point.” He looks at me. Smiles. “You like her.”

  “What?”

  “Your daughter. You like her.”

  I think about lying to him, but what’s the point? “Yeah, I like her a lot. She’s dating a girl right now. Asked me if I had a problem with that.”

  Leo laughs. “What did you say?”

  “What do you think I said? I told her I fly the rainbow flag at Pride every year.”

  His smile widens. “Oh, God. I’m picturing it right now. You. At Pride.” He shakes his head. “She was testing you. I hope she turns out to be a lesbian, for her sake. They have better orgasms than straight women. I read that in a magazine—wait, it’s more orgasms. I’m not sure if they’re better or not.”

  “You’re just a font of information today,” I say.

  “Don’t knock it till you try it. But seriously, what are you planning to do about Dao?”

  I update him on what happened in Indonesia, and on the video. “He’s not in Indonesia anymore, that’s for sure. He’s either on his way, or he’s here already. He played his hand by trying to have Bonnie taken. He’s not waiting anymore.”

  I don’t know how I know this, but I do.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Leo says sharply.

  “I’m going to lay low and let the police do their jobs. Simone is boosting the video and making the connections between that and when he assaulted the protester.”

  He nods. “Good. Getting his identity out there and the nature of his crimes. Still at Brazuca’s?”

  “For the moment.”

  “Can Whisper stay with Uncle Leo tonight?”

  I look at her on her belly, enjoying his rubs. Can’t bring myself to deny her more. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry I asked you to meet me here,” he says, looking at Seb’s plain headstone. “I thought I was ready to see it, but this was a mistake.”

  “You still miss him.”

  “I don’t even know if that’s it. When he asked me to leave, it shook me. I was angry—but I’m not angry with him anymore,” Leo says. “I used to be. When he died, I was even angrier. Now I understand his reasons and I’ve accepted them. He gave me no choice.”

  “Maybe he thought he was doing what was best for you.”

  “No, he was doing what was best for him. He wanted to do this without me. He asked me to leave the house, but in truth, he left me. People leave you, and you learn to live without them. When you learn to live without someone, that’s the end. You figure out you don’t need them, and no matter what happens, it can never be the same. The Seb that I knew and loved, I hold him in my heart and I won’t ever let go of that memory of him. But he left me, in more ways than one. He lay down the night he died with Whisper at his side, and he never called, never texted. He wanted to be alone.”

  I pat Whisper on the head and bid her to stay. She has been through so much but seems to understand her new life very well. Maybe even better than me. I imagine she even likes the variety of it. Me, Brazuca, Uncle Leo. She belongs to all of us and to herself most of all. I leave her there with Leo, who is still lost in contemplation of Seb’s grave.

  I’m suddenly cold. It must be all that sun I’ve gotten used to, to feel this way due to a little snow. I pull my hood up to ward off the chill.

  51

  What I love about the violent sycophants of the world is their lack of imagination. For a biker clubhouse, the dive bar decor is unsurprising in every way. There are pool tables and dart boards. The bar is a wooden slab where cheap booze abounds. If you want a nice glass of wine or a good Scotch, you’d have to go elsewhere. Not that there’s anything wrong with cheap booze. I was once a connoisseur, so I’m in no position to judge.

  It’s just like the movies except the bar doesn’t go quiet when I enter.

  There are no shocked gasps, no f
urrowed brows or angry mutterings. But I know my presence has been noted carefully. I know there are cell phone cameras pointed my way. There’s a man and a woman at the bar, both on their phones. There are available seats all around them. There’s an air of menace about these two that makes everyone but me think twice about sitting too close. I have nothing to lose but my life and the few remaining dollars in my pocket.

  As I approach the barstools I check my pocket just to make sure. There are no dollars left. Well, that’s disappointing.

  I sit next to the woman and smile at her in my best attempt at sisterly affection.

  Her expression doesn’t change.

  “Can I get you something?” asks the young waitress wiping down the counter. She’s South Asian, but I guess it’s not that surprising that she’s here, given the large Indian population in Surrey. Though it is a biker bar, so her presence does strike me as odd. Or maybe I don’t know bikers as well as I think I do. Maybe they’re big into diversity these days, who knows?

  “No, thanks. I’m just here for the sparkling conversation.”

  “Buy something or leave,” says the woman I’m still smiling at.

  “Why so hostile?” I ask. “You and your friend here have been looking for me, haven’t you? I just stopped by to make your jobs a little easier. Why don’t you call your little friends who put that watch on me and let them know I’m back in town. In case you forgot where I live, here’s the address.” I recite the details of Leo’s Chinatown apartment. Including the postal code. It feels good to be helpful sometimes.

  The man and the woman say nothing, but the young woman behind the bar scuttles away quickly.

  Ah, now there’s that silence I’ve been waiting for.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I say. “About how fugitives from the law get into the country. There are lots of ways—used to be easier to come through the US, but with all these illegal border crossings from the US into Canada these days, the RCMP is cracking down. Sad, I know. Some of our most enterprising criminal organizations have had to adjust. But there are still ways. Places like, for example, Southeast Asia, where a well-connected person can get a fake passport cheaply. That’s if you’re flying. But Vancouver offers a variety of options—that’s what I love about this city. A few years ago we caught two boatloads of migrants. And that’s just the ones that made the papers!”